How to Live a Balanced and Structured Life

As a husband and father of two with a massive business containing over 15,000 customers and 11,000 Beachbody Coaches (distributors), if I don’t structure my life, but yet stay balanced at the same time, I would probably ruin my relationship with my family or go crazy, or maybe even both. Over the years of building this business, I’ve been forced to make changes to my schedule, and if I wouldn’t have, I would never be where I am today, achieve the level of success I’ve achieved to this point. There is no denying it, without structure there is no success. It’s as simple as that, and if you think otherwise, you are a fool. So what are you going to learn in this post? I’m going to share some great tips on scheduling and structure that you can start incorporating into your own life so that you can maintain a happy family life and create a successful business.

First, let me share a little about me. I’m going to keep this as brief as I can because I want to share a lot of tips, but it’s important that you know where I came from and where I am today. 8 years ago I was at the lowest of lows in my life. I was out of shape, unhappy with my career, and just got out of a long-term relationship. Instead of sitting around and feeling sorry for myself, I decided to make a change, and it all started with my health. I found P90X, committed to 90 days of the program, and got into the best shape of my entire life. After going through the program, I developed this incredible passion for health and fitness, and decided to become a Beachbody Coach. A year into the business I was failing, struggling to pay my bills, about $20,000 in debt, had about $50 in my bank account at a time, but I still kept learning, adjusting, and pushing forward. 2 years later I had created a six figure income and decided to become a full time Coach. That same year I was named the Top Beachbody Coach in the entire network and increased my income by 4 times. The insane growth continued, and now not only have I created one of the most successful Beachbody teams in the company, but I have created freedom for my family and I. In 2012, at 27 years old, I was inducted into the Millionaire’s Club. Here’s a more in depth version of my Beachbody Coach story if you are interested.

So now that you know what I’ve accomplished, it’s time to get into the good stuff and what you came here for. In 2010 I had to completely restructure my schedule and business. It was because a great mentor and friend of mine, Craig Holiday, sat me down and told me that if I didn’t make changes, I would be stuck in the current static situation I was in with my business at the time. There was no way I was going to accept not growing my business, so of course I sat down with him and listened to all of his advice. What did he tell me? Here are some bullet points with the main tips he shared.

Stop being so scattered with your daily activities and schedule every task that you need to complete. This was a big one for me. I was that guy who would just get up in the morning with no plan of action and try to do everything at once. I was answering phone random phone calls, responding to Facebook messages and emails, replying to texts, and doing my normal marketing and business building activities all at the same time. Craig taught me that I needed to separate each activity and assign a time slot and time frame for those activities, and not let any other activity interfere. So I went out and purchased a massive planner with a bunch of highlighters, and wrote down what activity that I was going to do at each time of the day and color coded them. For example, from 8-9 in the morning I answered emails (blue highlighter), and from 12-2 in the afternoon I got on the phone with prospects (red highlighter). If a customer or Coach called me during my non-call hours, such as when I was answering emails, I didn’t answer. In addition to that, instead of getting on the phone and talking for however long the conversation would last, I put a time limit on each call, and made all of my customers and Coaches aware that each call would be no longer than 30 minutes because I was on a strict schedule. Once I got into the habit of sticking to a strict schedule every day, my productivity increased drastically.

Schedule family time. I know this might sound strange, but if you don’t schedule family time every day, you can easily become absorbed in your work and business and neglect those that are most important to you, your family, and chase them away. What does family time consist of? If you have kids, maybe for 2 hours before they go to bed you play with them, maybe something like hide and seek or take them outside for a nice evening walk. During that time, you don’t let any other activity interfere. For example, if someone calls you about business, don’t answer. It would be good to either silent your phone or shut it off as well. Once the kids go to bed, maybe you spend 2-3 hours with your spouse, where you give him/her 100% of your attention. Remember, success is nothing if you have nobody to share it with.

Stop wasting your time and energy on things that don’t affect you or your business. I’m a nice guy, at least I tend to think I am, but it was getting me into trouble with my productivity. How? Whenever a Coach not on my team would ask me for advice, I would happily get on the phone with them or write out a long message to help them out. It was happening so much that I was spending probably and hour or more every day doing this, but I was taught that if I wanted my business to grow, I had to dedicate all of my time to it. Craig explained to me that by helping out all of these people that weren’t on my team, I was doing a disservice to my customers and Coaches because it was taking time away from them, and he was right. This was tough, though, because I truly want to help everyone I can, whether they are on my team or not, but I had to prioritize, and that I did. When someone reached out to me, I had to start sending them back to their own sponsor. This freed up a lot of time that I could dedicate back to my business.

Create specific goals and write them down somewhere you will see them every single day. I’ll never forget what he had me do. He told me to go to purchase a big, white dry erase board, write down my mid to long term goals, and hang it somewhere I would see it every day. So what did I do? I hung it on my living room wall. In 2010, I had a massive goal of becoming the Top Beachbody Coach out of over 50,000 reps, so I wrote down in massive letters and numbers “TOP COACH 2010!” My work area at that time was my living room couch, so each morning I took a few minutes to stare at that goal and remind myself of the effort it would take every single day in order to reach it. Being able to see the goal daily gave me the motivation I needed to push hard during that day. And as you know from above, I did in fact become the Top Coach of the entire network.

Here are some additional things that I have learned through experience.

You will never achieve success without sacrifice. I can make this one into a whole separate blog post in itself, but I will keep it brief. The biggest sacrifices that you will have to make to create a six figure income is sleep and money. First, let’s talk about money, and when I say money, I mean investing in yourself and your business. Without investing in yourself, your business will never grow. It’s basic knowledge when it comes to building a business, but yet so many people don’t understand it. Sometimes it’s an investment in online learning, sometimes in personal development books, sometimes traveling to training events, sometimes it’s certain product, sometimes attending motivational speaker conferences. If you don’t invest in yourself constantly, you’re not going to get a return. Just like with everything else, these things that you’re doing to invest in your business need to be scheduled. For example, you need to be reading at least 20 pages of a personal development book every day, and that needs to be in your planner. Now, let’s talk about sleep. Do you want to REALLY succeed? If you said yes, I hope you’re ready to give up some sleep. You can’t build a million dollar business by putting in an hour a day. That’s not how it works. Get up earlier, stay up later, the more you work, the faster your business grows. After you are done with family time, for example, instead of going to bed at 10 PM with your spouse, stay up 2-3 hours more to work on your business. Instead of waking up at 8 to go to work, get up at 6 so that you can work for an additional few hours. This is what I did and it was CRUCIAL for my business!

Don’t get distracted by social media. Man, this is such a common one and something I see all of the time with the Coaches on my team. The Facebook News Feed is pretty much the devil, and can be a huge time sucker. For example, you get on Facebook in the morning, browse the News Feed, see some cool video about how couples fight, check out what your friend Jamie is doing today, and before you know it, an hour passes and you have accomplished absolutely nothing. Stay off of the News Feed, and there is even this cool little thing out now that blocks the News Feed so that you don’t get distracted by it. I don’t remember what it’s called, but I’m sure Google can help you out. The same goes for all other social media. I think Pinterest might be the devil as well. Pretty sure they have created some sort of mind manipulation so that you women become addicted to the site, and I’m pretty sure my wife is one of those women. If you’re reading this honey, I love you. But anyways, you get the point. Don’t allow yourself to become distracted by social media.

Work on your relationships (being a husband, father, wife and mother) as hard as you work on your business. Again, I can write a separate blog post for this, and I will eventually because of it’s importance, but don’t neglect your family. I have seen too many relationships come to a screeching halt because one spouse gets too absorbed into becoming successful. Trust me when I say this, it’s NOT WORTH IT! Relationships, just like your business, need time and attention, and you will fail and be forced to adjust constantly, and if you don’t the relationships will go under. One of the best things that Melinda and I have done is hire a sitter to come twice a week. Wednesday night is our date night where it’s just the two of us, and on Saturday night we go out with friends. As a married couple with kids, having that one on one time is hard to come by, but is also extremely important for your relationship and the marriage, so do your best to find a way to make a date night happen each week. It’s a time where you can reconnect with one another. There is a way to maintain a healthy and happy family life and build a successful business at the same time. I’m proof of that.

Schedule in your fitness and health activities. Taking care of yourself should be a priority, and if it isn’t, it’s time that you make a change. Once you build a successful business and create time and financial freedom, what is the point if you are too out of shape with medical issues to enjoy it? There is no point. Take care of yourself by eating healthy and working out daily. In addition to that, if you have kids, you want to set a positive example for them so that they grow up knowing the importance of living a healthy lifestyle. As a parent, it’s one of the greatest gifts that you can give them. If you do it, they will too. You are a leader by example. Plus, you want to make sure you are around for them when they are older and be able to enjoy life with them. I know too many people in their 60’s who are so out of shape with numerous medical issues that they don’t have the physical ability to be active with their children and grandchildren. That’s sad, but you control whether or not that happens. If you need help, hello, I’m a fitness Coach.

Delegate responsibilities. This is a tough one because you have to have some success financially to be able to hire an assistant, but it’s something that I wish I would have done sooner. I waited too long because I’m stubborn as hell and thought that I could tackle everything on my own, and I was wrong. What I discovered was that too much of my time was spent on things that I really didn’t need to do myself. There are certain things that only I can do, and there are certain things that I don’t have to do, and once I started delegating the activities that I don’t have to do to an assistant, my business began to grow once again. Why? Because instead of my day filled with nothing but “busy work,” I was focusing on the things I’m great at that will truly help my business grow, such as building relationships, being a leader to my team, and recruiting customers and Coaches. So what you need to do is get out a piece of paper and create two columns. One column should be the activities that only YOU can do, and the other should be activities that someone else can do for you. Then you find different ways, whether it’s hire an assistant or user something like Fiverr, to delegate those activities that you don’t need to do. Trust me, it’s one of the best things you can do for your business.

After reading through this post, do you have structure and balance in your life? Hopefully you do, but chances are you don’t. If you want to create a successful personal and business life, you have to start incorporating these tips into your life. If you have any questions, my Facebook page is the easiest way to communicate with me. Just send me a message and I will do my best to help you out.

One Comment

Well done, Josh! As a mother of two young kids, I’m just a few years ahead of you in life, but a lagging behind you in the beachbody coaching business. That will change, thanks in large part to blogs/training like this. Commenting is NOT on my to do list…gotta sign off…back to productivity!!!